Killer Coffee Queen
by signelchan
Summary: Maki hates her job as a barista, but it's better than the alternatives, even when she gets stuck serving the most excitable man she's ever met in her life. It's a good thing that she'll see him once and he'll be out of her life forever, right? [modern, coffee shop AU]


If there was one thing that Maki loved to make completely clear to every person she had to interact with on a daily basis, it was that she hated her job but preferred it to the alternatives, of which there were several. Rather than being a lowly barista at a coffee shop known for being shut down for failed health inspections, she could be a lunch lady in the orphanage dining hall, or she could be an assassin set up for death with one wrong move, and even though she knew she had the talents for the third option, she had been told she was "too valuable" to be lost in that field and so being a barista it was. She genuinely could not stand what she had to do from day to day, taking names and orders and oftentimes making them herself because she was the only person present, but the one consolation to it was that the people she had to interact with were often as angry at life as she was, and there wasn't much in the way of conversation.

Until the day a literal beam of human sunshine came bounding in through the front door at just past six o'clock in the morning, grinning from ear to ear and radiating positivity with every step he took. She stood at the counter, rolling her eyes at how absolutely happy this man looked as he came inside, and as much as she hoped he'd change his demeanor entirely by the time he got to her counter, she knew that this was not going to work in her favor. "What do you want?" she coldly snapped the second he was within earshot, him waving at her when she spoke to him. "I don't have all day."

"Never been here before, you've gotta give me a minute," he replied, not losing an ounce of his happiness he'd entered with. However, he did lean over the counter once he was there, bringing his face dangerously close to her chest, which he seemed to be looking at for something in specific. Right as she was about to push him away and force him to leave, he pulled back and shook his head, giving a disapproving click of his tongue. "You don't have a name tag on. How am I supposed to greet the person making me my drink by name if she's not even wearing a name tag?"

The whole exchange caught Maki by surprise, and she glanced down at her black shirt, which she'd never worn a name tag on her in life, before glaring daggers back at him. "My name doesn't matter, now order your drink before you start a line." She knew it was an empty threat, she'd been there and open for two hours and he was only the fifth person she'd had to deal with, but he wasn't familiar with the place and therefore couldn't call her out on her deceit. "Might I suggest a decaf black coffee? You don't seem to need the caffeine or the sugar, so…let's just do that."

He didn't let her brashness bother him even slightly, and he threw his head back to laugh. "That's a good one! Don't get told things like that at my normal coffee shop!" It took him a moment to stop laughing, time Maki spent still glaring at him, her hand already reaching for the smallest cup the shop had to prepare him what she'd suggested, on the house, just to get him out quicker. She wasn't fast enough, because once he'd recovered he said, "Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of something sweet and bright, just like you're bound to be underneath your barista shell!"

"I'm about one comment away from reporting you for harassment."

"Okay, okay, I'll take a large coffee, cream and sugar on the side. Oh, and whipped cream on top, I like stirring it in." She heaved a sigh, putting back the small cup she'd grabbed to replace it with the large one he'd ordered, but as she went to start adding coffee to the cup he stopped her with a "Wait! Aren't you going to ask me for my name?"

"Does it look like we're _busy_ enough to need your name?" she mockingly asked in reply. At this point it felt like it was Maki's goal to get the man out of her hair as fast as she could, but it seemed that he had it set in his mind how this exchange was supposed to go and she was not hitting any of the right notes. The way he looked at her with a dropped jaw, almost as if he was offended that she'd skipped such a crucial step in his coffee ordering experience, made her want to fill the cup up with the most-likely lukewarm coffee and throw it in his face, but she swallowed down her anger and decided that doing that would only cause trouble for herself. "Whatever. What name do you want on this?"

He lit up once again when she asked the words he'd been waiting for. "You can put it under Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars!" he exclaimed, at which she sighed again and, after finding a marker that worked, wrote _Kaito_ on the side of the cup. "Hey, you, uh, forgot the rest of what I said."

"I'm not spending more time writing your name than it takes me to make your drink," she told him, putting the cap back on the marker and beginning to fill the cup. She left barely enough room at the top to add any kind of whipped cream, and the amount of cream and sugar she gave him on the side was lackluster, but she never wanted to see this man again in her life and she was going to do all she could to get him to stay away. Once she'd finished preparing his order, she handed everything to him and said, completely stone-faced, "Drink's on the house, now leave. I've got cleaning to do."

"It's good that I've got places to be too, huh?" He really did not let anything she did faze him, which was strange to Maki as she'd scared off a fair number of regular customers with her attitude, but Kaito left without any complaints and even smiled at her as he went through the door. She followed him that far, locking the door behind him so that she could get a couple minutes of uninterrupted cleaning done before resuming normal operations, but for the rest of the day her mind was thinking about that man with his endless optimism and boundless energy, and how he could walk into a strange coffee shop at six in the morning and not be bothered by anything.

At least she'd never have to deal with him again, just like so many other customers she'd rather forget.

* * *

The thing that set Kaito apart from every single other problematic customer that had entered the coffee shop while Maki was working there was that he didn't take one dose of her sour attitude and decide to go elsewhere. By no means did he become a daily appearance, but he was around at least once a week, always at some early hour where she felt it was simply illegal to be so upbeat and energetic. His entrances were always the same, with a hearty laugh and a shining grin, and she would silently curse to herself that she had to deal with him yet again, and from there they repeated the same exact song and dance. She'd offer him a dull drink, he'd give her his exact order (which he changed up every time, even if it was a simple change) and ask her to write the lengthy title he referred to himself with, and she'd write only his first name before making the drink as close to how he'd ordered it as she could be bothered. Some days she'd make him pay, other days she couldn't even bring herself to care to charge him for something so simple, and he'd go on his way without having any further impact on her life.

Except he _was_ impacting her life, because he was the one customer face she recognized through the front door, before he even came inside. There was something about that cheery expression, that unruly head of purple hair and matching idiotic goatee, that disaster of a galaxy-print jacket he always had around his shoulders—all of it disgusted her and she wasn't sure why she cared even that much. To Maki, Kaito was just a weekly disturbance from her otherwise dull life, and she felt she'd be better off without his constant and regular appearance. He never came inside when anyone else was working (she'd asked all the other sorry souls who'd been recruited to work there, and none of them could recall seeing someone so vibrant and loud), and it became a running joke that Maki was being haunted by this man for some reason.

If anything, those jokes only made her despise his appearances inside the coffee shop more, and so the same old, same old continued on. "Y'know, I've been coming here for months now," he said one morning, when he was staring with squinted eyes at the crudely-written menu board, "and I still don't know your name. You know mine, I'm sure of it, but I don't even have a guess as to what yours might be."

"Can't say I remember your name at all," she lied in response, knowing fully well that his name was Kaito Momota, and that he referred to himself as the Luminary of the Stars, his delivery of that title ingrained in her memory. "And mine doesn't matter, so you can go ahead and stop asking me about it."

"Yeah, figured you'd say that, all of it, miss coffee queen over here, too busy being good at your job to care about anything else." He shrugged, not bothered by how she was remaining so brash with him even after months of his onslaught of positivity. "Guess your name's gonna be one of those things that stays a mystery to me until after I'm dead, huh?"

It took all of Maki's strength to not tell him that she knew some people who could help him out if he had a death wish, a task made easier when she saw a genuine look of sadness wash over his face at the statement. "I'm sorry, it's against policy for me to share my name with you. Now give me your order and let's get on with this, you're worrying me with how…different you're acting right now."

"So she is capable of feeling an emotion besides anger, I knew it!" Just like that, Kaito perked back up and went on with the normal interaction, complete with delivery of his preferred title that she once again ignored, but after he left Maki was forced to grapple with the reality of the different kind of conversation they'd had. He'd always seemed so happy and positive that she'd never thought she'd hear something quite as dark come from his mouth as she had that day, and even though she didn't care an ounce about the man and his backstory, she hoped that things would turn out okay for him.

As the days started getting shorter and the nights became longer, Kaito's entry into the coffee shop started happening while it was still dark outside, and Maki wasn't able to see him before he came inside any longer. That meant her first glimpse of him when he entered was once the door was open and he was illuminated by the lighting inside, and it was on those dark, cold mornings when she realized that up until he stepped into the shop, he didn't seem to be as outwardly happy as he was once he was inside. The thought that he was putting on a performance for her crossed her mind, but Maki dashed it right away because she couldn't believe that anyone, especially not a stranger like Kaito, would do anything to try and brighten her dim days.

It was at about the time that the days started getting longer again that Maki finally decided to concede on one of Kaito's points. By then, he'd been coming in at least once a week for over half a year, and there were two constants to every visit he made: one, he asked for her to write that ridiculous title on his cup as his name, and two, he asked her for her own name, for whatever reason. Maybe it was her having woken up in complete silence, all of her many roommates out of their shared apartment for whatever reason, or maybe it was her being able to walk to work for the first time in a while without the fear of slipping on ice, but the day just felt nicer to Maki, and she decided that she could do something nice for someone else for a change.

Exactly as he always did, Kaito came into the shop with a grin on his face, him knocking the hood from his second jacket (his first being draped over his shoulders carelessly) off his head once the door had closed behind him. "Good morning!" he greeted with a laugh, approaching the counter as was normal, her scribbling something down onto the nametag she'd found as quickly as she could before he got to see it. "What's new with you today? You're looking more upbeat than normal."

"Don't press your luck," she replied, turning away from him while he looked at the menu board, despite having everything on it memorized from his months of regular attendance. While her back was facing him, she fastened the name tag above her heart, looking down to make sure that she had it on correctly, and when she turned to face him once more she had to try to not draw attention to the minor change in her uniform.

But Kaito, used to the exact routine, was already looking at it, chuckling to himself once he'd read it. "Maki, huh? That's a pretty name for a pretty lady like you, can't see why you never wanted me knowing that before now." She went to open her mouth to explain her lie about names not being allowed to be shared, but he waved her off. "Hey, no need for excuses there, Maki Roll. I get it."

"Did you just—"

"Give you a nickname? Hell yeah I did!" Kaito threw his fists together as he spoke, causing her to step back and raise an eyebrow at his behavior. "It just felt right to give you that, it rolls off the tongue super well and I thought, hey, why not go for it? That's what friends do, y'know. They give nicknames like that."

Taken aback, not just by the suddenness of the nicknaming but also the fact that Kaito referred to them as friends, Maki sputtered for a second before she grabbed a large cup, scribbled his first name down on it, and got him a cup of the strongest coffee she had available to her, pushing it towards him sans cream, sugar, or anything else. "Get out of here, I'm not dealing with you today," she managed to say, while he looked at the full cup with wary eyes. "Just go, before I call the cops on you."

He hesitated to grab the cup, but ultimately did as she demanded, giving her a personalized farewell before stepping out into the dimly-lit morning air. In his absence, Maki nearly collapsed onto the counter in front of her, her legs shaking underneath her and her heart racing a mile a minute. She'd had people she'd called friends before, sure, but it had been years since she'd last spoken to any of them and she never thought she'd make friends again; yet here was this regular customer of hers coming into the shop, declaring that they were friends and giving her a cutesy nickname the day he found out what her real name was. Whatever Kaito's goal was with her, she wasn't going to let herself give in to him, and she assured herself right then that keeping her distance from him would be what was best for her physical and mental state.

For the next few weeks, she switched days off with one of her coworkers, who would report to her that there was never any purple-haired, incredibly energetic man coming into the shop on her shifts. That felt strange to Maki, because she knew Kaito was real—she knew that she couldn't have caused herself so much panic and she never would have given herself a stupid nickname—but she had no way to prove that she was being lied to. When she switched her days back to normal, she fully expected to be able to prove that coworker wrong immediately, but there was no appearance from Kaito at all for several weeks after the switch had been reversed. Right away she began to wonder if her threat to call the authorities on him had made him swear off coming to see her anymore, but she'd been harsh with him before that, he should have known she wasn't being serious.

That was a lot to assume of a customer, though, and as the shifts went by without any sight of Kaito she realized just how much she actually enjoyed his appearances there in the dull, dark mornings. She felt lifeless working days without seeing him, his energy and positivity sorely missed, which was something she never would have expected her to think, and even though she knew his full name she wasn't sure what she could do to find out what had happened to him. It was doubtful that they had any mutual acquaintances, and she had no idea who he would possibly know that she could ask about where he was and what he was doing. What was most surprising, though, was that whenever she'd figure that he wasn't going to be there on that particular shift, she would feel her whole body slump forward, her spirits crashing down into the ground and refusing to raise once again.

Finally, after she'd lost hope in ever seeing her strange regular customer again and was coming to terms with the fact that she'd scared him off, there came a morning that a familiar face came into the shop. He looked rough around the edges, his face a lot more gaunt than she'd ever noticed it being and his whole body looking like it could use a long nap, but he was still smiling when he came inside and his eyes lit up when he saw that Maki was the one at the counter, even though he was there on a day he traditionally hadn't come in on. "I started worryin' I'd never get to come in here and see you again, Maki Roll!" he called, his voice showing his excitement but rather gravelly, compared to how she remembered it being. "I'm really glad that you're here today!"

"What do you mean, you'd never get to come here again?" Never mind the fact that he specifically wanted to see her, Maki was curious about what had happened to so radically change the man's appearance. "That's not exactly something you drop on someone without explanation. So, go on, tell me what's happening."

If he was surprised that she cared, he didn't show it, but he grabbed one of the chairs from the seating area at the shop and took a seat, his arms clearly straining to even pull it out from where it had been tucked underneath the table, and once he was sitting down he started talking. "Before you start worrying too much about me, I just want you to know that I'm not contagious and you're not going to die being too close," he began, before coughing in such a way that made Maki's stomach lurch to hear. He seemed to be wheezing as he coughed, and there was something deep inside him that sounded like it needed to get out, and after his fit subsided he continued talking. "I've just spent the last while trapped in the hospital, fighting off like…three different lung infections. No big deal."

"No big deal?" she repeated, leaning almost all the way over the counter to get closer to him as he told his story. "I'd say that's a pretty big deal. What happened?"

"Oh, yeah, I never explained why I come in so early in the morning, did I?" It wasn't the story she was looking for from Kaito, but it was certainly the one that he was giving her right then, and so for the next several minutes Maki was treated to him recounting a large chunk of his life's story to her. "I've always been kinda a sickly dude, I just…don't actually show it if I can help it. Always been fighting things with my lungs and breathing and stuff, and I haveta go to appointments all the time right when the office opens to get exams done, every week. I come get coffee before I go, so that I don't fall asleep during or right after the exams because they're tiring and I don't exactly have all the energy in the world, y'know?"

"You, not having energy?" Maki couldn't believe that she'd actually heard him say that, not when she'd seen how he acted every time he came into the shop. "I'd believe that more if you weren't a living battery."

He laughed, coughing again but not as severely as he had before. "Yeah, that's what the doctors always tell me too, but it's the truth! I can act upbeat to please others but when it comes to not passing out after hours of breathing treatments, I'm not exactly down for that. But anyway, after that last time I was here, I went to my exam like normal and something went super wrong and I ended up in the hospital until everything cleared up, and clearly that took forever." This time when he coughed, he pounded on his chest a few times and managed to dislodge something, which he got up to spit into the nearest trash can. "It's all good though, I'm not coughing blood up anymore and I've got close to full lung function. Er, as close to full lung function as someone with only half their lung function in the first place can have, I guess."

"God damn, should you be outside walking around unsupervised?" she asked, that being the first thing that crossed her mind at hearing the extent to what this guy's problems were. "I can call someone to get you, if you need it."

"Nah, no need, my grandparents are out in the car to drive me around until I'm feeling completely better." To illustrate his point, Kaito flexed one of his arms, which used to be rather defined and muscular but now was barely a fraction of what it used to be. "Gonna take some time and effort to get back to how I was, but that's the beauty of life! I'm still here, I got another chance at living, and I'm gonna do it exactly how I want!"

From there, he got out of the chair and came to the counter, letting Maki see more of the extent of the physical changes he'd endured during his illness. Up close, his face was even more sunken in and angular than it had been, and she could tell that his hair and goatee were on the brink of falling out, but he had a shine in his eyes that told her that everything was going to be okay. Just like old times, though, she only wrote his first name on the cup, but she gave him a little extra of what he ordered rather than skimping on everything, and she could tell that he was grateful for the bright spot in his day.

As he was walking out, at about the time he normally gave his goodbye, she called out, "Come back and see me same time next week, got it, Kaito?"

"Wouldn't change it for the world, Maki Roll! See ya then!" he replied with a smile, which she couldn't help but mirror at him in return. Her heart was soaring that she'd gotten to see him again, and even though she was distraught at the idea of what he'd gone through in his time of absence she was glad that it wasn't her fault and that it wasn't something that she needed to guilt herself over. He was alive, he was still going to visit her, and she was going to do her best to make sure that every exchange they had from there on would be acceptable if it ended up being their last.

* * *

On the roughly one-year anniversary of Kaito's first stop in the coffee shop (a milestone he pointed out, not Maki), he came in bearing a bright bouquet flowers and a little card written out to her, decorated with a starry nighttime scene. "It's the least I can do for my best friend," he told her as he offered her the gifts, smiling at her as he saw she was stunned by the gesture. "You've had to put up with me for a whole year, Maki Roll. Normally by now I've been beaten or bruised or told that I'm not welcome, but you've just kinda put up with me every week and that means a lot to me."

"What do you mean, people did that kind of stuff to you?" It was a genuine question, as Maki wanted to know who'd chosen to hurt Kaito rather than let him do his own thing and let him worm his way into their heart, but when he remained silent she felt it unnecessary to press further. "Anyway, thanks for this, it means a lot to me to know that you care this much about your regular barista."

"You mean that I care this much about my best friend," he corrected with a wink, "and of course I care! Who else gives me free coffee sometimes, and clearly enjoys seeing me so early in the morning? You even cared when I almost died! There were, like, three other people who weren't my grandparents who did that, and none of them did anything for me but look sorry about it and maybe apologize once or twice. I bet if you'd known what was happening sooner you would've come and seen me at the hospital, yeah?" She thought for a moment before nodding, which seemed to be the correct response, as he nodded as well. "That's what I thought! You're really deserving of the title of best friend, Maki Roll, I hope you get that."

She looked at the flowers again, seeing the pastel assortment of different types of flowers she didn't know the names for, and his passion for her came through exactly like he wanted it to. He certainly did consider her his best friend, something she'd never expected anyone would do for her as a young adult, and now she had to come up with some response that wasn't just another rehashing of what she'd already said. "Well, Kaito, I didn't remember that this marked one year of us knowing each other," she admitted, hoping that her honesty wouldn't become a point of contention between them, "but I think I know what I'm going to do for you today to make up for my lack of gift."

"Sounds like a plan, Maki Roll! Lay it on me whenever you're ready for it!" Giving her a thumbs-up that she couldn't help but smile at, she moved his gift behind the counter to clear off her workspace before they broke into their traditional exchange for his morning coffee. The one and only change between that day and all ones previous was that, when it came time for him to ask her to put his name on the cup, she wrote exactly what he told her, addressing him for the first time as Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, which she punctuated with some crudely-drawn stars around his name. It wasn't as grand of a gesture as his had been, but he was still taken aback by it, blubbering something about how he never thought she'd ever write it, and she shrugged it off.

When he left that morning, his spirits were rocketing through the atmosphere and she was left stunned at her own display of kindness that she'd just delivered. Muttering to herself that she wasn't going to let it become a regular thing, she glanced towards the bouquet and the card again and sighed, realizing that Kaito was not going to let her go back to cold and distant after that exchange. That became especially true after she opened the card and read what it said inside—a whole lot of his inspirational and positive stuff, as well as his phone number at the bottom, asking her to call him whenever she felt that she was ready to take their friendship outside of the professional realm.

Making that leap was not something that Maki ever planned on doing, as she had still been convinced that she was going to push Kaito away with her cold exterior and her unwillingness to conform to his levels of peppy, but now that she had the opportunity presented to her, she was faced with the fact that she kind of _wanted_ to see him outside of work. He was just that convincing when it came to assuring her that they were friends, and that he enjoyed being in her presence even though it was forced on her side. That was a call that had to be made some day after work, when she could get alone somewhere that wasn't her crowded home and risk being overheard, and when she first dialed that number into her orphanage-assigned phone, she worried that he would see where the number was from and turn her down immediately.

"Heya, Maki Roll!" he opened with, the second he answered her call. "Wasn't expecting you to call me today, I figured you'd do the typical girl thing and wait a few days to see if I was still interested, or whatever it is that the movies insist happens. What're ya doing right now? Bet it's as amazing as you are." He was just as eager to conversate with her over the phone as he was in person, and it made Maki regret calling in the first place, but she grit her teeth and explained that she was sitting in a park, by herself, talking to him. "Sounds kinda boring. Why don't ya just go home?"

"That's not something I want to explain to you," she said, but by the time they'd been calling back and forth for a week she was opening up to him in ways she didn't expect. He found out quickly that she was employed with the orphanage where she'd grown up, because they needed mature hands in different positions and she wasn't exactly sociable enough to go find a job anywhere else. From there he learned that she lived in an apartment with several girls to each bedroom, where she was the oldest but just barely, and while none of them had to pay rent to live there, their wages were cut to provide the space for them to live. And once he knew that, he was building a grand plan to help her find somewhere else to live, somewhere else to work, and a whole new life to lead.

This was in addition to his weekly visits to the coffee shop, where she still played difficult with him but always ended up giving him exactly what he wanted in terms of name on his cup and drink inside of it. Their banter, which had been one-sided and forced for so long, was finally genuinely enjoyed by both parties, and Maki constantly found herself watching Kaito leave with his drink and counting the hours until she could talk to him again. By the time they'd been talking for months on end, he offered to let her come live with him at his grandparents' house, to get her out of the apartment with the other girls and to start finding her own path. "If I move, I lose my job, and I'm not supporting myself with no money," she said, appreciating the offer but knowing that she couldn't make it work. "It's sweet that you'd do that, but…"

"Whoa there, who said that you wouldn't have any money?" He was standing in his place on the other side of the counter inside the shop, staring her down with his goofy grin and shining eyes that she couldn't resist staring into. "That's what your boyfriend's for, don't you think? He's here to support you!"

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't have a…" she started, before trailing off as she saw his expression change, going from his typical to looking expectantly at her, as if he was waiting for her to make some big discovery. "Kaito, is this your way of asking if I want to date you?"

"It might be," he conceded, when he saw that she wasn't bouncing in exuberance, which he should have known not to expect from her. "I just thought that asking you outright would scare ya off, so I tried to be sly with it and I don't exactly think it worked." As he talked, he brought a hand to the back of his head, scratching and ruffling his hair in dismay at being turned down. "I guess I shoulda thought about how you'd take it a bit better. If ya want me to stop coming in for real now, I'll really do it for ya, Maki Roll. I will."

"Hold on, who said that I was going to say no?" If anyone had ever told Maki a year and a half before that she was going to meet a regular customer who'd manage to break down her shell and convince her to _date_ him, she'd have punched them squarely in the throat, but there she was, ready to jump into Kaito's arms without any hesitation. "I don't see any reason why I shouldn't give you a shot, not when you've given me this many this far."

"That's the spirit!" Thrusting a fist into the air, it was clear that Kaito was over the moon at her acceptance at his awkward way of asking her out, and for the first time Maki had the thought that if she wasn't on the clock at her dumb job, she would go and hug the guy for his troubles. But then the thought occurred to her that she wasn't going to be at the dumb job much longer, so what was the point in following their rules? She quite literally jumped over the counter, nearly knocking over the cups stacked on one side, and wrapped her arms around Kaito faster than he was able to realize anything was happening. "W-what's with this? Didn't take you as the affectionate kind."

"I'm not," she told him, before burying her face into his chest, which was pleasantly muscular much to her surprise. "I just thought it'd be nice to hug you. Since you're, you know, my boyfriend now." He laughed at her reasoning for the gesture, but did not hesitate in wrapping her up in his own arms, lifting her off the ground and spinning her around a couple times, before setting her back down on the floor and watching her wobble as she tried gathering her balance.

"Say, Maki Roll, can I ask ya something, since we're dating now?" His eyes were widening as he waited for her response, which was a nod that she gave once she wasn't still dizzy and she'd gotten back over the counter, to prepare him a special drink to mark the occasion. "Okay cool, I've just been wondering…what's with the Rapunzel-length hair? You work in a coffee shop, that's bound to get annoying, huh?"

She paused in preparing the drink, thinking about the obnoxiously-long hair that she'd always had and maintained even though it was a nuisance all the time. "It does get annoying, but I've never cut it before so I've just kind of left it alone. Why do you ask? Can't stand girls with hair longer than yours?"

"No, that's not it at all! I was just thinking, since you're my girlfriend and you're going to be living with me—which I can't _believe_ you agreed to any of that, by the way—I was kinda thinking that maybe I should learn how to do your hair for you. Y'know, to be a good boyfriend when you don't feel like doing it yourself?" It was clear that Kaito had put a lot of thought into this whole situation, and Maki wasn't going to turn down free gestures of kindness from the one person in the world that was overflowing with them.

And so it became tradition that every few nights, after she'd showered and washed her hair from roots to ends, Maki would sit down in front of Kaito while he was on their bed, and he would find some way to style it for her. As he worked, he would talk about how he knew that doing hair wasn't seen as a manly thing, but he'd known several men with hair long enough to braid and curl and put up and he figured that if they could do their own, he could do the hair of someone he loved. Hearing him say that would make Maki feel warmth deep in her soul, in places that she thought would forever be cold, and she would lean back into his legs, requiring him to kick her forward so that she wasn't pinning her own hair back in ways that made it inaccessible to him.

Living together at his grandparents' house was a drastic change for Maki, and she spent much of the first weeks there constantly looking over her shoulder, being protective of her meals and spending all of her free time making herself as small as possible. She was used to being somewhere crowded, and it showed, but Kaito and his grandparents were not the kind of people to want to see their new family member hiding herself away. "You've gotta actually eat with us one of these days," he told her with a comforting smile, while she was getting herself a plate of food one night to take outside to sit where she wouldn't be bothering anyone else. "I know that I'd love to eat in your company, and who knows! If you eat with us, my grandparents might tell you some embarrassing stories about me, since they've raised me my whole life."

"That sounds like it could be fun," she conceded, looking at Kaito and finding herself melting in the warmth of his smile. "I'll try it, just this once. If it goes well, we'll see if it happens again, but if it goes poorly I'm out."

"There's no harm in just trying, yeah!" Still as enthusiastic as ever, Kaito brought her to the chair that they'd always had open for her and made sure she was sitting there across from his grandparents before he ran back to get his own food. That was the nicest meal that Maki had ever had in her life, even though the food was nothing special; the company that she enjoyed it with was what mattered most to her, and she realized that she had something amazing in her life there with Kaito and his family, and she couldn't bear to lose it. How she'd managed to get it in the first place, she had no idea, but she was never going to let them go unless they were pried from her hands and even then she'd fight to get them back. She was in _love_ with someone and that thought terrified her, but she wasn't going to change a thing.

* * *

Time went on, and Maki became more comfortable with her new life there at Kaito's side, and he became even more proud of the woman he'd worked so hard to get to love him every day that passed. Since she had a specific skill set that she could rely on for employment, she was able to easily get a part-time job at a coffee shop that wasn't run by a money-minded orphanage, and from there she was able to assume a manager position within the first year of having the job. That was just extra income for them, though, seeing as Kaito's grandparents were more than happy to provide for the couple and he himself worked a desk job for the local chapter of the space agency (since his physical illness had marked him ineligible for actual space work, which had always been his dream).

They got to see each other every morning she worked, because he would make it a point to go inside to order a drink at as close to six o'clock as he could, just for old time's sake. "You know you see me whenever we're at home," she teased him every time, before hand-writing his over-the-top title on his cup, despite being able to print a label for him instead. "You don't have to come buy overpriced drinks to get a look at me."

"You're right, but I think the price is worth the beauty." Every day when he left the shop he would grab her hand and kiss her farewell, a gesture that would have gotten any lesser employee fired on the spot but because she was the manager it was allowed to happen without any consequence—a fact that Kaito was told he was taking advantage of one day. "Oh, that's taking advantage of something? I can change that."

"Don't change it, you don't want them to rewrite the rules, do you?" Even though Maki knew that she was the one who really had the power to change the rules, she didn't want Kaito knowing all of the aspects to the situation. "Just keep it at the hand kisses, I'm able to clean those up without too much trouble." She couldn't bare to think about how she'd be if he planted a kiss on her face while she was working, because every time he kissed her outside of the shop she could feel the tickling of his facial hair for minutes after, a tingling sensation that she equated with the passion of his love.

"Okay, well, if you insist, I can keep with them," he said, knocking his head from side to side a couple times before heading out of the shop. She gave a content sigh in the wake of his energy, feeling like a huge part of her was walking out whenever he left; this was a romance that she'd never expected herself to find and she was always left in awe of how powerful it was. Kaito was certainly aware of the power he had over her, but at the end of the day he always respected her boundaries and didn't push any further than where she'd stop him, a constant since they'd first met.

But Kaito was also always looking for ways to convince her to let him push further, and just when Maki would determine that things were exactly as they were always going to be, he came up with something new to try on her. The tool he needed for his newest idea was the online ordering system that the store had started using, which Maki couldn't stand making drinks for but appreciated that she didn't have to talk to people to get their order from it. The only interaction she ever had to have with the customers with those drinks was when she had to call out the name on the cup, and that was so quick that she didn't ever think much about it.

On a few occasions, Kaito would send his morning order in through the system, and she'd get as far as staring at the cup to say the name before realizing that it was her boyfriend's drink, and he'd be waiting right outside the door to hear her sputter before saying it. That wasn't an everyday thing, though, and so Maki never knew to expect when it was going to happen, only that it could possibly happen at some point. Even when she'd get Kaito's exact normal order—whipped cream on top and all—she wouldn't check the name until she was calling for the drink, something that she told him several times after he flustered her with his sudden appearance in the store.

Therefore, it was only fitting that he order something completely different for once in his life and send it through the online system, sitting right outside the front door in the dark morning to listen for Maki's announcement of the drink being finished and ready for pickup. There were a few people in the store, which gave him some cover in case she suspected that it could be him pulling a fast one over her, but he knew that she didn't check the names until she was calling them, so his plan would most likely work. And work it did, as Maki made the drink, went over to the pick=up part of the counter, held the cup closer to her face and began her normal call for it, "One dark chocolate iced mocha for Mrs. Ma—wait a _second_."

Bursting in through the front door with his hands cupping his face, Kaito looked purely ecstatic at what he'd heard her start saying, while Maki had looked straight in his direction with her eyes almost shut with how narrow she'd gotten them. "Wanna go ahead and read that out for me again?" he asked her, while she mimed throwing the drink at him. "You've gotta get used to calling yourself that name, after all."

"That's not…there's no…Kaito are you…are you serious?" Maki could feel every word catching in her throat, the concept of her ever marrying this guy never having crossed her mind until she'd almost read that cup that had her would-be married name written on it. "Is this how you're going to ask me?"

"Nah, that'd be stupid," he said with a laugh, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a simple ring box, which he opened without much in the way of fanfare. "But this, this is how I'm gonna ask you. Maki, please, will you marry me?"

A million answers ran through her mind, but the one he was looking for was the one that she eventually gave him, earning the applause of everyone who was paying attention to the spectacle there in the store. Their engagement was short-lived, though, because Kaito clearly didn't want to wait around forever for something to happen to either of them, and within six months they were officially, legally married, in a small ceremony where the only attendees were some of his friends and his grandparents, because she hadn't wanted to invite anyone that she knew. These people were the only family and friends that mattered in her mind, but Kaito mattered above all else and nothing was going to change that.

Nothing except the surprise news she gave him a little while after their wedding, which she felt was only right to deliver through the use of her writing names on coffee cups: a large cup labeled exactly as Kaito always wanted his—Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars; a medium cup labeled as if Maki had gotten herself a drink in her husband's presence—Maki Momota, Killer Coffee Queen; and lastly, a small cup, carefully decorated with words that Maki didn't know how else she'd say them—a tiny cup for a tiny Momota. In true Kaito fashion, when he got to see the display he first noticed that she hadn't put his nickname for her on her own cup, before realizing _why_ there were three cups to begin with.

Now it couldn't be said that Maki hated her job managing that coffee shop, but she was kind of actually looking forward to the alternative that she had on the horizon. It was amazing what a special kind of love could do to a woman's perspective, but she wouldn't trade any aspect of it for the world.

* * *

**A/N: I wanted to write some fluffy momoharu and so I did**


End file.
